Hi All,
I understand the rule to a good lease is that your monthly payment is < 1% of MSRP.
Questions on this assumption:
Just jumping in here to see the answer…i would like to know as well.
From what I understand how the 1% rule works:
Standard lease terms that get you the best rate (MF) and residual. This can mean that the term could be 27/10k, 24/10k, 30/10k, etc.
There is no surefire way to calculate lease mileages on different terms when it comes to the 1% rule however we can all agree that 10k is the starting point (unless we’re talking about Rolls Royce, Bentley, Lamborghini leases…)
I would not say you should breach the 1% rule even with 12k or even 15k miles. There have been too many deals out there that have the higher mileage caps and still fall well within the 1% rule.
Typically we judge a lease to fulfill the 1% rule if the drive-offs are just paid at lease inception. This includes your first month, TTL, doc fees, tire tax, etc.
If you come under the basic drive-offs you are only doing better than you could have at the baseline.
So baseline is 10k a year minimum, basic drive-offs. Anything better is where you earn your Leasehackr badge 
I thought 1% was inclusive of all fees. If that is the case my jeep gc lease was at .75 of Msrp. Not bad, feeling better and better about it.
There is no 1% “rule”, it’s just a very rough ballpark. People interpret it any way they like - including everything, including tax only, 10K miles, 15K miles, etc. Some genius came up with this “rule” and everybody fell in love with it 
Man i sure did. I think its a good rule of thumb though.
From my understanding it includes all fees including inception fees. I was offered an Audi A3 Quattro Premium with a 17% discount, but dealer wanted $3,300.00 up front for inception fees (Tag, dealer fee, etc) I went to another Audi dealer got the same deal, but only 1st month drive off with all fees rolled in the lease payments. I might be wrong that inception fees aren’t suppose to be added to the monthly payments and should be paid up front…
I would think the 1% benchmark includes all fees; otherwise inception feed and any cap cost reductions (which are not advised by the way for leases) would result in artificially depressed monthly payments
1% never includes payment toward cap cost
But it’s unclear if our 1% rule includes factoring in basic drive offs or not
If the drive off costs (excluding MSDs, which can be significant but are refunded unless you beat up the vehicle) are the difference between being under or over the 1% guideline, it’s an ok deal - not great, probably not very good. Also probably not bad (depending on the model and associated lease program).
Take a look at a lot of the killer deals on here (front page deals, etc). They’re quite a bit under the 1% guideline. If you split the fairly small drive off costs across the 24-39 monthly payments, it doesn’t push the payment/MSRP calculation very far.
If you don’t consider CCR, then many terrible deals can/would “pass” the 1% rule.
I think my wording came out wrong.
I meant to say we assume $0 towards cap always so it shouldn’t be a factor in comparing lease deals, since we don’t pay towards it to begin with
Some clarity on the rule would help me understand where I need to be when putting a deal together for a Hackr
Are you seriously expecting any type of unanimous agreement on this? LOL
I add up all drive offs, monthly payments, tax and divide by the number of months in lease…if it’s 1% or less, I feel good about leasing that car.
Having said that, I only do zero drive off leases. 10K minimum, but prefer 12. Shorter term always better…NEVER over 36 months unless they are giving the car away.
I usually think of the 1% rule to mean the monthly with taxes rolled in and fees paid upfront with no CCR. 36/10k
My personal reasoning behind the 1% rule:
Is this vehicle better to buy or lease? By using the 1% rule, your lease hackr score will be 8.33 if you are right at 1% (100 months/12 = 8.33 years.)
So you need to include all costs of the lease when computing this.
Hello,
I’m new to the forum and am trying to get myself educated on how to determine if a lease deal is good. This is an amazing site, but there is a lot to take in lol.
I’m curious about the leasehacker score. I read on the calculator that higher scores are better. However, I didn’t see any info on what the scale is. Is it a 1-10 or 1-100 scale? Thanks in advance for any clarification.